Warfare and Wanton Destruction: A Reexamination of Deuteronomy 20: 19-20 in Relation to Ancient Siegecraft

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) To Michael Walzer, with admiration In January 1865, Henry Halleck, chief of staff in Washington, D.C., wrote to Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman in Savannah, Georgia: Should you capture Charleston, hope by some accident place may be destroyed, and if a little salt should be sown upon its site it may prevent growth of future crops of nullification and secession. In response Sherman wrote: I will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston but don't think salt will be necessary. [...] The truth is whole army is burning with insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. almost tremble at her fate.1 The horrific devastation of a city and its surrounding territory planned in this Civil War correspondence is an atrocity common to history of warfare. For ethicists and jurists, these strategies of urbicide (wiping out a city's architectural memory) and ecocide (ravaging an environment) concern ius in hello,2 and by proscribing destruction offrait trees in siege situations, Deut 20:19-20 has made a historic contribution to this area of Just War theory and Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC). In what follows examine Deuteronomic prohibition in setting of ancient siege warfare. In particular challenge some current interpretations according to which law constitutes a polemic against, or subversion of, foreign imperial ideology. After situating practice forbidden by Deuteronomy in larger context of military tactics in ancient Western Asia and eastern Mediterranean, attempt to show that law emerged from an intrasocietal discourse on acceptable military conduct rather than an intersocietal response to warfare of other nations. We begin by looking briefly at reception of law in modern jurisprudence. I. HUGO GROTIUS, AND NEO-ASSYRIAN SIEGE TECHNIQUES More than two hundred years before American Civil War, Dutch jurist, philosopher, dramatist, poet, and Christian apologist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) published De iure belli acpacis, a three-volume treatise that stands as a formidable monument in history of international law.3 One particularly influential chapter of this work exhorts military leaders to display Temperamentum circa vastationem et similia.4 Appealing to universal authority of ius naturae,5 its pages quote a wide range of Greco-Roman authors, demonstrating frequency with which they condemn wanton destruction of lands and cities. But it also draws heavily on Jewish authors such as Philo and Josephus, as well as medieval commentators, who censure gratuitous wasting of property.6 For Grotius, views of this group are imbued with greater authority since they descend directly from the Law (i.e., Torah). The specific biblical passage to which these writers appeal is Deuteronomic prohibition of destroying fruit trees when one besieges a city, known in Jewish tradition as ...: When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of field human to withdraw before you into besieged city? Only trees that you know do not yield food may be destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siegeworks against city that is waging war on you, until it has been reduced. (Deut 20:19-20 according to TNK) On basis of this scriptural text Grotius admonishes his readers: For if Creator and supreme LORD of Mankind did not approve, that Israelites should lay waste without Necessity Lands of People, against whom he had armed them in an extraordinary Manner, and had made them as it were Executors of his terrible Judgments; much more would he not approve our doing so in ordinary Wars, often unjust, and undertaken without much Necessity, and wherein Party who boasts most of Justice of his Cause, is sometimes in wrong. …